Sunday, September 11, 2011

Gamerz: Not What I Expected

by SandWyrm

I had the afternoon off from the Wife and Kids today, so I decided to try out a new game store down on the South Side. New to me, that is. The store has actually been around for 3 years, but I'd just never made it down there to see what it was like. Even though it's only a few miles west of the Game Preserve South.
From what little I'd heard about the place, I had expected to find a fairly small, dirty store with 2-3 tables. About the size of the Game Preserve North when it was still in the Fashion Mall. Much to my surprise, however, Gamerz turned out to be rather large (and quite clean). Roughly 50% larger than either the GP South or Games 2D4. With fully 2/3rds of that space given over to the gaming area. Nice.

Here's about half of the "Store" area. With windows behind the counter to the gaming area. The owner's name is Tim.

Here's the gaming area. It was a bit crowded on the far side due to Tim having just bought a bunch of shelves at the local Borders Books fire sale.

There's some smaller private rooms behind me. He's got 4 large tables set up more or less permanently. With several felt-covered Magic tables to the right that I presume he has 6x4 tops for, as he talked about running tourneys here.

The terrain was adequate and a little better in overall quality than the local norm.

Not bad at all. I like the cleanliness of the place. Tim obviously takes pride in keeping his stuff in good repair.

This table was set up for Flames of War.

Overall it looked like a nice place with great service. Though I sensed that Tim might have figured out who I was and laid it on a bit thick for the benefit of the blog. :)

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a 40K game in. Since the Colts (local pro Football team) were playing, attendance was off. But I did get to pick Tim's brain about Flames of War. Their regular 40K night is Tuesday, and they do Flames on Wednesdays, so Farmpunk and I will probably come down and try our hand at some WWII action with the store's armies.

18 comments:

After giving up on GP south a year or so ago for being too cliquey I made gamerz my go-to place...

Their tournaments aren't run very well at all, hardly any effort has ever been put in to them, ever. Their apocalypse events are so disorganized that I haven't played a single game of 40k since their last one.. It has put me off of the game so bad..

Other than that, 40k isn't pushed all that well there.. They're Flames of War and Pokemon crazy, thursday nights does see a full house, but they're mostly pre-arranged games.. I've had 3 total pickup games at Gamerz in the years going there. The bigger store and pokemon environment brings a lot of children, who will - and have- steal your models, or pick them up and drop them..

Tim is not a bad guy, not at all.. Just dont ever try to order anything through mail order from him. Friend of mine waited something like 8 months before giving up on a box of daemons he ordered through him..

I think my favorite gaming spot in Indy has to be Saltire Games up on the northeast side, they're crazy about WFB, but they do 40k leagues as wellAnd I've never been to Games2Die4 because my mother was sleeping with their owner at one pointlol

They have great space yes, but as Metrosh stated they are not a 40K friendly store yet. I have also visited them before. They are more magic as Metrosh states. If you like Flames of War they and G2D4 are the place to go.

in the past decade there have been 3 game stores in hamilton county, and none of them lasted very long. as it is, there are 2 stores close enough to hamilton county to service it fairly well, and their sphere of influence keeps others away.

"Yep. I know the perfect location too. Village Park Plaza, right where 31 and Keystone come together."

That would be perfect. I work like 3 minutes away and its on the way home.

"there are 2 stores close enough to hamilton county to service it fairly well, and their sphere of influence keeps others away."

Not really. GP-north is on the far side of 465 and with the traffic around 86th street it's only marginally quicker to get there versus G2D4 from Noblesville. Saltire is in the same camp, close, but not enough closer.

G2D4 is also the only store that has a weekend 40K gaming crowd. If GP-North had people playing 40K on Saturdays, I'd probably game there instead.

Yeah, GP-North is 20 minutes away from me. That's not aweful, but it's not great either. Especially in traffic. Their service is only so-so, and there's no Saturday or Sunday gaming to speak of.

Saltire? It's on the other side of Fort Benjamin Harrison and the Geist Reservoir from the North Side. Going around the traffic jams those cause turns it into a 45-60 minute trip during rush hour. I could go to any other store in the city (including Greenwood) in less time than that.

The problem in Indy is quality not quantity of stores. Most stores don't do enough to organize events and instead rely on their players to do it. The problem with this at a store level is its always the same guys that do it and eventaully it seems to be just one guy doing it and it gets old real quick.

I think the guys at 2D4 have done a great job as working as a group to get things done and also not leave just one guy doing all the work. This does seem to be changing at other stores as well and I feel the dynamic atmosphere of gaming here in the Circle City is on the upswing.

I also feel that a gaming community in Indy for 40K is still something fairly new. Before it was just a series of local store communities and now we have really begun developing a city wide community. We work together for events and game together at each others stores.

For anyone that thinks their local store is lacking in 40K I suggest reaching out to your local gaming community for help and not wait on the store to come around especially if you live in Indy.

A game that costs as much as 40K to play needs to be promoted and supported if its going to grow. If a store thinks that having the game on the shelf and a couple casual players is going to make the game grow they're either severely confused or just living in denial. The bottom line is if you want more for your local scene its probably on you the player to make it grow, but you don't have to do it alone.

As far as gaming locations go, is that about on par, or does that seem a tad large to you? In my area, we have exactly 1 store that has any gaming space in it, and it has room for four tables scrunched together. It's tight, smelly, and no place I care to play. Seeing things like this makes me jealous.

Most of the local stores can handle 6 tables or so. Some like Saltire or Games 2D4 can go as high as 8 or 12 in-store. With the economy in the dumper, we've had a lot of events at the GP South and G2D4 where we were able to rent empty storefronts next door to use for playing space.

It's nice that Indy has options, but I've lived in Dayton and St.Louis and the game stores there put all the ones here to shame.

You could fit the entirety of all the game stores in Indy into the St.Charles MO Fantasy shop. Wexford Hill Hobbies(now called Krystal Keep I think)in Dayton had more selection than all of the Indy stores combined.

:( I have to travel about 20 mins in one direction for a club closed some nights, or about 45 mins (actually longer, as I don't drive, it's a half hour train and then 20/25 walk)the other for a club that recently has struggled for half a dozen players.

So while Indy may not be great in your eyes, I'd much rather have that...

Over the last 12 years or so that I've been in Indianapolis, I have noticed this aspect of the gaming community where communication is lacking except within certain groups. In an effort to help with that issue, I set up http://www.circlecitygamers.com about a year and a half ago. It's not really picked up much traffic from many folks, except the WHFB group that used to hang out at the GP North. There are a few Warmachine players there, but they don't post much.

I think it would be awesome if we could get a good 40K crowd going over there, especially since I know there are a great number of players in the area.